The Offing: Sister Quintana & the Berlin Germany Mission

I can't believe tomorrow is the beginning of a new year. I'm so grateful I was given the opportunity to spend 2018 in Germany. I always wanted to live abroad in Europe and i never thought that would come true haha.
This past year has been one of the best years of my life. The most precious thing to me (among meeting some of my best friends and experiencing so many great and challenging moments) has been how much closer I've gotten to my Father in Heaven than ever before. My perspective on life has changed immensely. As I've studied the doctrine we teach, I've gained a stronger testimony of it's truth. I know we once lived with God, our Father who love us immensely. I know he wants to give us so many blessing that he created a plan of happiness for each of us. I know he created this world so we could come here and obtain a body, so we could be born into families and meet dear ones to us where we can learn together, love together, and experience true happiness. I …

I just want to wish you all a belated merry Christmas! I had no clue that our preparation day would be changed to today... I spent my first week in Neubrandenburg and it was awesome! Germans celebrate Christmas for three days!!! I am beyond grateful to have been able to have a second Christmas in Germany.
On Sunday we decided to go street contacting. We turned onto a street and were walking and I was just looking at the homes we were passing. All of the sudden my eyes caught sight of a Christmas tree in the window of a second story home. I stopped walking and pondered whether or not we needed to go klingel this home. Sister Hiatt and Sister Jensen asked if I wanted to go and I ended up saying yes. I am grateful we went. We klingeled and after a couple of seconds a young boy comes to the door and we ask him if his parents are home and that we are missionaries for the Church of Jesus Christ and would like to share a Christmas message with them. Well, he said he would go get them and clos…

Boy do I have news to share!
We received a call from the assistants to our Mission President this past Tuesday, this is how our conversation went:
Elder: Hi Flensburg Sisters, how are you doing? Us: We're doing good, thank you. How are you doing?  Elders: We're doing good too Us: That's awesome to hear! What can we do for you? Elders: Well Sisters, are you ready for your transfer call? Us: You're lying  Elders: No Sisters, we are not *Insert laugh*
And indeed it was not a lie. Sister Vreugdenhil and I have been transferred out of Flensburg. Our time in Flensburg and together has reached its end. Sister Vreugdenhil is going to the Hannover area to be with a Sister whose companion is going home, and I'm on a train headed to Neubrandenburg-- in the Berlin area. 
Within these past 10 weeks about 30 Sisters have finished their missions and reported home. Crazy.
This past week was filled with preparations to leave. My entire mission I have been praying to be able to witness someone…

We experienced a huge miracle this past week. We were given 20€ by our Mission President to serve someone as a companionship. We prayed a lot about how we could use the money and for whom. We felt we needed to buy flowers for 2 of our members. One of these members is a less active member in our branch, who we had never contacted before. Nevertheless, her name popped into our head. We asked the other member (we had given flowers to) to come with us. We were quite scared going into this, primarily because this sister had said she didn't want much to do with the church. However, we also knew God wouldn't lead us astray because we were acting on His prompting. We klingeled and made our way up to the last floor. We looked up at the stairs ahead us and saw a woman looking down at us. She was not happy. She let us in, but she was not happy. We told her we brought a member with us and that she was still going up the stairs. That made her even more unhappy. We all went into her apartme…

I can't believe time is flying by. We have begun our Light the World initiative here in Flensburg, and let me just say it has been quite stressful. However, it has been so touching for me to see how Sister Vreugdenhil and I are being blessed for our efforts.
We have been crazy busy with our plans and it has been challenging. A few tears have been shed here and there. Some chocolate has been eaten, okay a lot of chocolate. And many sprints to the bus stops have been sprinted. And here's the thing, it's only been 3 days of December.
Within this past week, prayer has taken a whole new meaning for me. This week was rough and I don't think I had ever come close to wanting to give up as I did this week. We're giving it our all and somehow we always get thrown curve balls. With all the things that we've confronted, I've learned that God is God and he doesn't just abandon us. I have asked myself many times this week how things are going to work out with the plans…

Today has been just a crazy day. From being notified my instagram account was hacked to realizing we forgot something in our apartment. Deep breath. All is well now.
This week has been the beginning of greatness here in Flensburg. Sister Vreugdenhil and I have big plans for Flensburg. Oh yeah, we ended up staying for this next transfer. We'll be asked how long we have been here and Sister Vreugdenhil will look at me and I'll look right back at her and say, ''You were here before me haha.''
We have our Light the World campaign this coming month! And let me just say, we are PUMPED. Flensburg is going to be LIT like a light bulb the entire month long. Well, at least that's our plan. Considering we're still in November and we're already confronting challenges, we know it won't be easy but it will totally be worth it.
With the many things we've had to face, I can't help but think of the Standard of Truth prophesied by Joseph Smith, ''The…

Hello! I don't have much time to write, but I thought I would share an awesome miracle we had yesterday. This week has been really tough for us. Yesterday had a very rough start to our day. We walked into our sacrament meeting and were not doing so good. As the sacrament was being passed, we noticed a man we didn't know. He was too far away for us to talk to him so we waited until the meeting was over. We went over and found out quickly he doesn't speak much German. His mother tongue is Portuguese and with the help of God we were able to communicate with him through a Spanish-Portuguese combination (That itself was a tender mercy because since being on my mission I have spoken with Italians without having a problem, but I have always struggled with Portuguese). As we spoke with him and asked him who he was, we found out he was a visitor. He told us he has been in Germany for about 2 years now and is looking for a christian church to attend with his family. He said he went …

Well, I completely failed last week. You'd think that after being in Germany for a year, I'd know how to spell brötchen correctly-- especially since they're my favorite haha. You live and you learn!
This past week we went to serve in our local Tafel, which is basically a fresh food and hot meal service place for people living under social services. We were put in the fresh fruit section, I was to give out pineapples. Since the Tafel hadn't received much, or at least initially they didn't, I was asked to limit distribution to families of 3 or more. There were probably 200 people that came throughout the 3 hours we were there. Within that time, not a lot of families that qualified to receive a pineapple wanted one. They wanted lemons, blueberries, raspberries, and grapes. They really wanted grapes. As they got to me, many of the people said they didn't want one. And then there were many individuals or families of 2 that really wanted a pineapple and it tore me to …

This past week was quite a revelatory week for me.
I'm coming up on my year mark this week, and "coincidentally" enough this past week I was on exchanges with our Sister training leaders in the area that I was trained in. On Tuesday, we got on a train and headed to Hamburg for the next 24 hours. We pulled into the train station and it felt like I had never left. Things just continued to get even stranger from there! We took the U-bahn back to the apartment where I used to live. I spent the day with one of the Sisters there and we went by on a Spanish member from the congregation I served in for the time I was in Hamburg. It was amazing to be able to see her again, and within 5 minutes I found out that I'm losing my Spanish quite rapidly... yikes.
The biggest miracle that happened while I was back in Hamburg was that we came in contact with a man that was baptized in another area of Hamburg (that area now belongs to the area where the Sisters are serving). I remember m…